Fan control on rack servers is an important part of system management. Typically, the primary goal of fan control is to adequately cool the chassis. A secondary goal is to minimize the fan speeds in order to reduce power consumption and noise. While providing adequate cooling is still paramount, power and performance have increased in importance.
Many existing fan control algorithms on rack servers run the fans at a minimal speed which is determined by the ambient temperature (i.e., the temperature in a chassis containing the computing system). When any component exceeds its target temperature, the fans will be sped up until that component cools below its target temperature. To keep fan speeds low, the target temperatures are usually set to high values.
To facilitate understanding, identical reference numerals have been used, where possible, to designate identical elements that are common to the figures. It is contemplated that elements disclosed in one embodiment may be beneficially utilized on other embodiments without specific recitation.